Having just returned from a visit to China, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) on Thursday last week resigned from his position as senior adviser to the Presidential Office.
He called a news conference at which he denied reports that he supports China’s “one country, two systems” policy, while angrily complaining that some people had put words into his mouth.
Did Soong really say during the trip that he supports “one country, two systems?” Those of us who were not there cannot be sure.
However, the statement issued by the PFP at the news conference offers some clues.
According to the PFP statement, Soong’s trip to China, during which he inspected various places in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, was purely economic in nature.
The statement said that Soong never uttered the words “one country, two systems” during his meetings with Taiwanese businesspeople operating in the region, or during media interviews, let alone said that cross-strait relations should be handled on the basis of “one country, two systems.”
Maybe Soong never mentioned “one country, two systems” in the presence of Taiwanese businesspeople.
However, the third point in the PFP’s five-point statement includes the following: “Given that the mainland [China] has proposed exploratory ideas, democratic consultations are the only way for the two sides of the Strait to sit down and communicate. All parties and factions have the right to state their own proposals. Consultations are just a procedure — they do not mean that an agreement has already been made.”
Evidently, Soong, or the PFP, has chosen to accept and take part in exploratory ideas about “one country, two systems,” as proposed in the “five points” that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) put forward in a major speech on Jan 2.
Having acceded to Xi’s proposal in practice, why would Soong need to express it in words?
From China’s point of view, it is an honor for any Taiwanese politician to be interviewed by Xinhua news agency. If Soong had not acted as a pawn in the Chinese Communist Party’s game of coaxing Taiwan toward unification by echoing Xi’s “one country, two systems,” such an interview could hardly have taken place.
The statement also said that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to “one China,” with equal status and separate governance, and that to reach an agreement on exploratory ideas, they must go through two democratic procedures, and so on, but this is all empty verbiage.
Hong Kong is the first place where “one country, two systems” was implemented. The legal basis for “two systems” was written into the Chinese constitution in December 1982.
Then-Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) on June 22, 1984, promised that “two systems” would be applied to Hong Kong and that this would “remain unchanged for 50 years.”
The Sino-British Joint Declaration, which was signed on Dec. 19, 1984, reiterated the same point. Nonetheless, the whole world can see what has happened to Hong Kong now, so how can Soong ignore reality?
As a former reporter, I interviewed Soong several times during his five years as governor of Taiwan Province.
He was indeed, as former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said, one of the few talented people in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It is therefore unfortunate that during his latest trip to China Soong has wandered far out of line with Taiwanese public opinion.
Paul Lei is a former editor of the Chinese Christian Tribune.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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